Social Enterprise & Innovation

Social Enterprise & Innovation

Publication info

Share

CARE is working to create lasting market-based solutions to poverty.

By focusing on self-sustaining business models with high social and economic impact, our social enterprise ventures can become important agents of change in communities with underdeveloped markets.

What is a social enterprise?

Social enterprises are ventures that use business models to advance a primarily social mission. Well-designed social enterprises are sustainable, scalable and offer financially robust mechanisms for addressing poverty and its ill effects. By identifying business opportunities that exist within development programs, social enterprise programs help turn finite aid projects into sustainable, market-driven economic ventures that help develop communities over the long-term.

We see the development of viable social enterprises as the natural evolution of market-based development and a necessary step to fulfilling our poverty-fighting mission.

From microfinance programs to innovative distribution projects, CARE has learned over the years how to harness the power of inclusive businesses to spur development. These efforts are bolstered today by CARE's strategy to promote market creation and enterprise development. Our unique skills and experience allow us to develop inclusive supply chain solutions that bridge the gap between the informal and formal economies. With the right support, these gateway enterprises have the potential to become powerful partners and vehicles for change in areas where markets are underdeveloped or significant gaps exist.

Donate

Reaching the Unreachable

In 2004, CARE piloted a project to address the problem of highly informal rural marketing and distribution system of Bangladesh, which deprives poor’s access to many important products, information and income generating opportunities.

The project started with 25 poor women selling Bata shoes door to door in isolated, rural areas in the north. Soon it became clear that the CARE had tapped into a massive market, so we expanded the project into other areas of the country. And we expanded the array of products available to the “sales ladies” as they became known, offering products from Unilever, Bic, Square, Grameen Phone, Lal Teer Seeds and Danone.

In October 2011, the project formally become an independent social enterprise known as JITA and, today, it employs more than 3,200 disadvantage women with the goal of providing jobs for 12,000.